 |
 |
Joint effort to fight Parkinson’s disease CYNTHIA DANIELS June 8, 2005(Newsday) - Determined to win their personal yet very public battles, actor Michael J. Fox and Msgr. Thomas Hartman joined Tuesday night to move closer to their their common goal: curing Parkinson’s disease. Hartman, founder of The Thomas Hartman Foundation for Parkinson’s Research Inc., said Tuesday that his organization pledged to give $1 million to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. "It’s an exciting time, and there’s a lot going on," said Fox, who joined Hartman at Rhona Silver’s Huntington Town House for the Hartman Foundation’s second "Cure For Sure" Dinner. If we take "all the research and put all the money together, Parkinson’s can be cured in our lifetime." Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991, said in five years his foundation has raised about $55 million and helped start more than 200 research projects in 16 countries, including Israel, Sweden and China. The $1-million donation will help support Fox’s foundation’s Linked Efforts to Accelerate Parkinson’s Solutions, or LEAPS, program, which awards multimillion-dollar grants to research teams who are focusing on vital understanding and treatment of the disease. Hartman said this donation will support a team that is working at labs across the country to investigate the differences between the blood of someone with Parkinson’s and the blood of someone without. "What we’re doing is very simple," said Hartman, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s four years ago. "We’re trying to bring healing, we’re trying to bring a cure, we’re trying to say it’s worth time researching this. There’s only one enemy, and that’s the disease." Dr. James D. Watson, a Nobel laureate who is chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which has partnered with Hartman’s foundation to find a cure, said today’s fast pace of science translates into more than just quicker discoveries but also heftier price tags. "We’re going to do some exciting science," said Watson, who added that the lab will closely examine which genes are responsible for destroying the dopamine-rich brain cells in those with Parkinson’s and why. "If we don’t have something to show you in a year, I’ll be disappointed." So will Fox, who said he started his foundation to eliminate the red tape and lengthy waits of grant decisions in hopes of accelerating the journey toward a cure. "The only real definition of success with Parkinson’s is when we cure it and are out of business," he said. from: Northwest Parkinson's Foundation http://www.nwpf.org/articles.asp?id=1326 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn